“It’s My Duty”

“I wanted to make a brand new start in my place of birth,” she said, “to bring my experience to the textile market here.”

In Kosovo, as in other parts of the Balkans, unemployment rates remain stubbornly high, especially for the youth. Two out of three young Kosovans of working age do not have a job.

We’re helping to change these statistics, providing hope and opportunities for the future. Working in conjunction with our partners, UNDP’s Self-Employment Program helps support skilled young entrepreneurs like Mirjeta with start-up grants and mentoring services as they launch their businesses.
Mirjeta’s brand “MH” is already receiving orders and has hired employees. She doesn’t regret her decision to return home and she’s now a leading example for other young Kosovans. “As an educated woman,” she explained, “it is my duty to do so.”

“I Didn’t Know How to Get Her Back”

Fatima was at her wit’s end after her ex-husband kidnapped her oldest daughter.

“I repudiated him,” she said but found the legal process frustratingly complex. “I didn’t know how to get her [back], and I didn’t know who to ask.”

Egypt’s family courts are notorious for their labyrinthine procedures, making this part of the legal system difficult for many poor and illiterate people in Egypt to navigate.

Thanks to UNDP, Fatima found her way. Our partnership with the Egyptian government has created 32 Legal Aid Offices across the country, which provide free advice and services to empower marginalized, vulnerable groups in their search for justice.

Our staff do much more: they train other staff, hold roundtables for family court judges, and assist with digitizing and automating records. Thus far, we’ve helped more than 50,000 Egyptians like Fatima navigate the family courts.

“The Legal Assistant office told me what to do,” she said. While still working hard to get her daughter back, with the help of UNDP, Fatima remains hopeful. “Now I am following the procedures.”

“It Safeguards Our Identity”

Contrary to what one might think, ecotourism camps run by the Pemón people in Venezuela’s Kamarat Valley are preserving, not eroding, their unique culture and way of life.

For Victorino, president of the camp at Uruyén, “tourism helps the community [with jobs and income], and it also safeguards our identity as an indigenous community.”

Begun in 1984, these sites offer visitors a sample of everyday Pemón life, landscapes, food, ways of living, and culture. But more importantly, they’re a crucial pathway for Pemón survival, transcribing their reliance on agriculture and fishing into modern, sustainable practices and livelihoods.

Ecotourism is a vital lifeline, enabled by support from UNDP, which has helped the Pemón improve the camps’ physical infrastructure and agricultural activities.

“With the improvement of these services, the entire community has benefited,” Victorino said of these vital lifelines, which help some 6,000 Pemón. “Thanks to the support we have received, a lot has changed. We are reclaiming our land with these resources.”

“It’s About Becoming Something”

Hurricane Matthew’s winds whipped through Ana Celeste’s house as the storm pummeled southwest Haiti in October. “It shook us so hard,” she said, “it took everything.”

Months later, more than one million Haitians are still struggling to recover. The storm’s impact damaged or destroyed over 120,000 houses, and wiped out 80-100% of the region’s harvest.

In Haiti, UNDP’s cash for work program, Soley Leve, is helping people rebuild their livelihoods. In exchange for performing critical recovery work, like clearing clogged canals or fixing broken sanitation systems, we put income into the pockets of Haitians. The wages are used to buy food, send children back to school, fix houses, and more. Importantly, Soley Leve also fosters community, one that builds its future together.

“It’s about becoming something,” said Ana Celeste. “It’s about something sustainable, a future for my children.”

We aim to create 1.5 million working days for roughly 150,000 Haitians, empowering them to rebuild their communities, earn a livelihood, and regain their dignity.

“I’ve Benefited from Beekeeping”

“I’m famous with the bees,” said Victoria. Known to most as Mama Beehive, this industrious mother of seven is inspiring others in Uganda.

Victoria and her family live in the country’s mountainous eastern region, where the impacts of climate change are jeopardizing traditional agriculture-based sources of income. Rising temperatures hinder crop production, more intense rainfall produces increased landslides and flooding, and deforestation and loss of vegetation combined with extreme rainfall are eroding the topsoil. As a result, food security has deteriorated and farmers’ livelihoods are endangered.

Thanks to our programs promoting sustainable agro-forestry activities and providing vocational training, many Ugandans have diversified their work. Beekeeping, which relies on nature to produce honey to sell, is one such activity and has become a lifeline for many, including Mama Beehive.

“I have benefitted from beekeeping,” she said. With the profits from her honey sales, Victoria can pay for her children’s school fees and uniforms. It’s an investment in their economic – and environmental – future.

"I'm proud to do this"

Afghanistan has one of the highest maternal and child mortality rates in the world. A lack of health facilities in rural areas, combined with a scarcity of female health workers, means that many women don’t receive the healthcare they desperately need.

But women like Abida are set to change this situation. Along with 200 classmates, she will graduate from nursing school this year and will go to work in some of the poorest villages in her home province.

“I’m here to learn something, so I can serve my village and my country,” Abida explains. “I’m really proud to do this. I try to study as hard as I can.”

The nursing school in Jalalabad is one of six across the country that are training more than 200 nurses. Set up by the Afghan Ministry of Public Health with support from UNDP, the school is training a new generation of female healthcare workers. When the first class graduates, these new nurses will return to some of the most disadvantaged parts of Afghanistan, bringing much needed health care to women in the hardest to reach communities.

“I don’t waste a single day without learning,” says Abida. “I don’t want to see a mother die on the way to a clinic, or see her child become an orphan.”

"Necessity is the mother of invention"

The Syrian Civil War has displaced 6.5 million people, upending families and putting one in four Syrians in poverty. UNDP is working hard on many levels to restore dignity to Syrians, including training women in new technical skills.

Aisha, her husband and their five children fled the devastating conditions in Aleppo to a shelter. There, she trained with UNDP to become a plumber because the family couldn’t get by on one income. “Necessity is the mother of invention,” she says. “There is nothing wrong if a woman works to help her husband — together we can make a more productive outcome.”

Using the drainage tool kit given to her, she started fixing water faucets within the shelter and improving her income. Aisha’s main concern is providing for her children: “I’ll use the money to buy their school uniforms.”

Plumbing puts bread on the table, but Aisha is most proud of being able to repair pipes to bring safe, clean water to other Syrian families.

"I am often haunted"

The April 2015 earthquake that rumbled Nepal destroyed strawberry harvests for many Nepalese. In Nuwakot district, famed for its fragrant fruit, livelihoods were destroyed and people were afraid to return to work among the aftershocks.

Sukumaya, from Hillevite in Kakani, lost more than 10 kilograms of strawberries that were being nurtured for cultivation in the quake.

“I was plucking strawberries leaves when the earth began to shake,” she recalled. “Even now, when I am on the field, I am often haunted.”

But with the help of UNDP, Sukumaya restarted her plantation. Through UNDP programs, Sukumaya and other Nepalese micro-entrepreneurs received 1,500 strawberry runners to help revive their enterprise.

Now, Sukumaya is back in business, able to provide for her family. And we’re proud that hundreds more within her district have moved out of poverty thanks to our recovery programs.